It’s been a few weeks since our last update on House Lannister; thank you for your patience. The good news is that delay has been a productive one – I’ve been getting in as many practice games with House Stark as I’ve been able.
Understand that I am deeply suspicious of theorycrafting. My background puts my competitive gaming origins in competitive Starcraft, a game which fundamentally resists netlisting and armchair theory; your instincts and reflexes under pressure are essential components to your strategy. Plenty a real military campaign that sounded good on paper fell apart because people literally didn’t understand the physical requirements of moving boxes off boats. Thinking of the perfect comeback two days later in the shower doesn’t actually help you win an argument when it counts. So when I forward a strategic opinion I want to make sure there’s some reality behind it. For people with deep practical experience in a game already often theory can be enough, but A Song of Ice and Fire is a new game for me and that means I needed to put a bunch of games through before I felt comfortable talking about and providing advice on House Stark.
And one of the main lessons I learned is that House Stark is not for me. I have a certain play style and approach in games and House Stark categorically resists it in the same way that House Targaryen enables it. This made it very hard to come to grips with the faction but I’m a better gamer for having done so.
Faction Core
House Stark wants to race the enemy to the bottom and win with experience. When everyone is bleeding and exhausted that’s when House Stark is just getting going. They’re warriors in a way not many other Houses are, and their troops often stand alone without any need for complex synergies. They have an extremely diverse roster with three distinct subfactions. House Tully are the honourable, wealthy southerners who are used to fighting Lannisters; the Crannogmen are better-funded Free Folk, and the Umbers are the barbarians and berserkers. They have an extremely wide range of excellent attachments, very good medium-cost infantry and some very good commanders.
But notice that through all of this I’m not giving a plan to win battles, a fundamental philosophy of combat? House Stark doesn’t have that. They’re well rounded generalists, with lots of individually good pieces but nothing that really says “this is a faction about grinding your opponent down with morale and attrition”, or “this is a faction that wins through speed and flanking”. House Stark doesn’t have a gimmick, it’s just a wide selection of good stuff that wins fights, and while you can go deep into any of the subfactions you’re likely much better off going for some sort of combined arms approach.
One other key strength of House Stark is the wolves. The direwolves are uniquely mobile flankers, harriers and objective holders and they can actually have some punch to them especially against low quality infantry. They’d be amazing if they didn’t give up victory points when they die – but they do, so be careful how you use them.
Tactics Cards
House Stark’s tactics deck is kind of unimpressive as a whole. It’s stuff you’ll use, absolutely, and having Assault Orders natively is just a slam dunk for any faction, but the deck doesn’t have any real playmakers in it naturally – nothing that will let you do something that you outright couldn’t do without a card. Instead most of these are incremental advantages, and in fairness those add up. You’ll generally want to cycle through the base cards as fast as you can to get to the commander-specific tactics cards, which are generally excellent.
Winter’s Might: Add Sundering and re-rolls at the cost of taking wounds, roll the highest attack dice value if you control the swords. Just a generically useful fighty card, and it’s great in the situation where you’ve got a crippled unit in a slugging match – but. It is not nearly a given that the circumstances where this will be useful exists. If I ever ended a round with this card in my hand and I wasn’t going to use it for sure on my first activation next turn then I’d discard it without a second thought. Taking two wounds almost certainly doesn’t pay for its benefits most of the time.
Northern Ferocity: This is oftentimes going to simply be a much worse version of Winter’s Might. It’s barely worth using if you’re not on one rank already. But for both this and Winter’s Might, the initial reluctance regarding them dissipates if they’re used on Stark Berserkers – we’ll talk about them more later.
Devastating Impact: Panicked and vulnerable off the charge, solid if you get it on round 1-2 but if you get it on round 3 when all the lines are locked and nobody’s doing any charging it can be dead weight.
The North Remembers: But the North does not remember dead doggos, so keep in mind that this doesn’t help you avenge direwolves. This is arguably one of the only real playmaker cards in the Stark deck because the utility of guaranteeing a 6 on the charge is an entirely new capability that can let you perform maneuvers that you couldn’t otherwise, but it’s difficult to meed all the conditions for it. Absolutely savage when paired with something that can Overrun, like Greatjon Umber.
Winter is Coming: It’s a sweet thing to be able to charge Tywin Lannister in a unit of halberdiers and just laugh off all his bullshit, or throw a unit of Unsullied Pikes in the dumpster… but you’re guaranteed to be facing neither of those things. This is a good card at shutting down a specific category of Order-based defenses but if you don’t have a clear and present use case for it pitch it ASAP.
Swift Reposition: Two inches of movement when you need it isn’t flashy but it’s often what you want more than anything else when you’re actually playing.
Assault orders: This is the big one, able to get you surprise turn one charges and squeeze extra potential out of already monstrous combat units while denying a critical NCU zone. Use this whenever you can, but if you’re setting it up be aware that your opponent can claim the swords zone to have a unit of archers fire – or just to prevent you from having it – which can leave the unit you marched into position awkwardly exposed. If you’ve got an activation advantage on turn one then you can bait out all your opponent’s activations and then march+assault orders charge at a time when they can’t do anything to stop it.
Commanders
Robb Stark
The smartest Robb Stark tech I’ve seen is putting him in a unit of Stormcrow Dervishes. Dervishes are at first glance a pretty whatever unit for seven points, but if every time they attack they immediately retreat and heal 2-4 wounds then suddenly they’re incredibly mobile and extremely difficult to put down. Another Robb Stark trick I’ve heard of is the ‘Doggo, Fetch!’ move. Dance of Dragons is a scenario about picking up objectives, but you slow to a crawl while carrying those objectives. However if you have Robb’s doggo fetch an objective and then power it across the table with a combination of tactical reposition, swift reposition, the doggo’s own speed, etc you can actually get the wolf a long way towards safety which is generally not something that reliably happens in that scenario.
Rob’s cards are fairly straightforwards: Just More Retreats, Come At Me Bro, Oh No You Tried To Come At Me and Faceplanted, It’s Time To Retreat Again. It’s a lot of mobility, but the vast majority of it will carry you away from the objectives or put you in position to immediately be charged in the next turn, so he feels like a very advanced commander for someone who really understands the value of his mobility.
Eddard Stark
Flying in the face of House Stark’s stab-self strategy, Eddard actually brings healing to the table which is a rarity for Starks. He also brings his honour guard, aka the only good Sworn Swords, who are just Sworn Swords with an improved statline. They’re not exactly Kingsguard but you won’t regret having them. His tactics cards are Northern Defiance, which allows him to auto-pass a panic test – do not underestimate this one because you can use it after the dice are rolled, Lead By Example which is a nice solid dice-adder, and Fury for the Fallen which is a really excellent card that allows you to do a whole lot of sneaky positioning. Notice that Fury for the Fallen does *not* say that he has to target the unit that did the attack that triggered it, and there’s no range restriction? It’s so permissive that it means that if you get it in hand then Eddard gets a free activation that turn which includes another two points of healing for your troubles.
Eddard is a great commander and the best way to use the Sworn Swords that came in the starter box.
Greatjon Umber
The combination between Overrun and Reckless Heroism as orders is profoundly good. It doesn’t trigger until you kill something but when you do kill something you’ll go on an absolute rampage, and it’s one that’ll be deeply reliable allowing you to project out at targets 11 or so inches away. He will basically be biding his time until that goes off, however, so I don’t actually think he wants to be in a mainline combat unit – he wants to be in a secondary flanking unit who can come in at the right time to deliver the killing blow. I find myself oddly favouring Bolton Cutthroats as the place to put him, if only because berserkers want different attachments.
His cards are all excellent too, supporting berserkers who are House Stark’s core infantry in doing more of what they want to do already. The ability to drop a card for 2-4 auto wounds is way better than most equivalent cards that add sundering or whatever. He’s also House Stark’s best dragonslayer – dragons being fast moving glass cannons kind of hate a guy who can smash them for a bunch of automatic wounds and then punch them right back at full strength.
Brynden Tully
The Blackfish in a unit of Tully Shields turns them into an almost unbreakable anvil, or in a unit of She Bears makes their War Cry almost guaranteed to go off – but the coolest thing he brings is Set for Charge as a tactics card. Set for Charge is an incredibly ability in general, not least because when you perform a melee attack you get to change your facing and alignment, letting you spin to face a flank charge and potentially slide a few critical inches out of charge range of whoever was going to hit you on the followup. Being able to do this unpredictably at any moment is an absolute game changer card. Refuse to Yield is at its best on a unit of Sworn Shields locked in combat while your archers are shooting into the fray – your Shields will pass all their panic checks and hand out wounds and vulnerable tokens like candy. War Cry is and remains an incredibly generically useful ability.
Tully doesn’t bring as dramatic swingy effects as Eddard or Greatjon but the reason to take him is these tactics cards.
Byrnden Tully, Outrider
This is a complex one. Elusive Escape and Stark Outriders seem like they should naturally go together but my experience is that is a huge amount of effort to go through to put a weakened token down, and Stark Outriders are deeply aenemic for their price – so I’d focus much more on Sentinel. This is House Stark’s only access to Sentinel, and while Sentinel is a very good ability you’ll need to put in a few games to really get to grips with all of the careful threat-angling you need to do in order to actually send it off.
So if Tully’s attachment abilities aren’t impressive, he again makes his value in his tactics cards. Ride By Attack is an enormously powerful mobility option that can get you out of a combat while laying down four(!) automatic wounds to a full strength enemy. If you use it on speed 6 cav you can even punch right through an enemy infantry unit and wind up in their rear arc (slower cavalry don’t have the speed to land their entire base on the other side of an infantry unit off the back of a single march). Getting a cavalry unit into the enemy backfield is a huge deal and can completely savage a backfield of archers who were otherwise relying on screening infantry. Ride Them Down! is another absolutely clutch card – it’s not the hitting power of a full cav charge but it’s a massive mobility threat which can double down on getting that unit of cav backfield. It can’t be overstated how good being able to reliably force an engagement against an unprepared opponent can be. Marshal rounds Tully’s cards out by letting you sacrifice mobility when you have too much of it to recover some wounds.
Tully is an absolute build-around of a commander, capable of taking House Stark into an all cav skew list. There’s not much like him in the game and his abilities are absolute playmakers.
Howland Reed
Superior Flanking is more difficult to pull off than it seems – you need to get a flank charge with an infantry unit that has no special mobility tricks. Still, he brings Disrupt, and Reed in a unit of Sworn Shields is an intensely durable defensive brick. His cards, though, are nasty. Crannog Traps can turn an enemy unit off for a critical turn and it’s hard to overstate how nasty Dangerous is as a terrain feature. If the central fight is happening in a forest and they have a unit they intend to activate multiple times taking 1d3+1 wounds each time they do can completely silence their gameplan – and the fact it doesn’t hurt your own troops is just gravy. Bog Devil Ambush is the only reason you might not put a Crannog Warden in a unit of Stark archers, perversely – the Warden doesn’t come with the Crannogman keyword despite it being in their name, so you want Jojen or Meera to get the most out of this excellent card. The Threat Unseen can be surprisingly difficult to pull off if you’re not positioned right for it – you want to make liberal use of midfield forests during terrain setup to maximize this, but that can compete with where you want to position terrain for Crannog Traps.
Rodrik Cassel
The biggest drawback to taking Rodrik as a commander is that you don’t get him as a NCU because he’d synergize really well with himself. Still, he’s got a natural home in House Bolton Bastard’s Girls – his Boldness and Courage can count twice for the arrows and the subsequent charge, and the fact that they throw down Vulnerable tokens natively helps him out with a variety of his cards. His cards are also roundly good, though less dramatic than his peers – Combat Prowess is a neat counterspell that’s easy to trigger, and Martial Superiority will let you attack and defend at the same time in such a way that’ll shred low quality infantry. Press the Advantage looks cool but in practice getting Weakened tokens on the field as House Stark is a real challenge. Getting tonnes of Weakened and Panicked tokens down off the back of some She Bears is entirely practical however.
Infantry
House Stark has some absolutely amazing 6-point infantry. Not being able to either cheap out or go ultra-elite on their main battleline gives them the feeling of being above-average warriors on the ground.
Crannogmen Trackers
These are definitely okay, and the main reason for that is that they’re about as good in close combat as they are at range – which means you’ve got a bit of flexibility if you need to charge them in and retreat them afterwards. The traps are especially good against poorly armoured troops and could contribute towards ranking a dangerous enemy unit that is otherwise difficult to attack. But while saying ‘they’ll fold to a stiff breeze’ seems obvious, I want to emphasize that the average cavalry unit can wipe them out in two activations even when hitting them in the front.
The thing that this unit, and units like this, really struggle with is not having room to move around. In 30 point games where there’s less of the table occupied by blocks of infantry they’re vastly more useful, but when the battlefield is crowded their value is just hard to find.
Stark Sworn Swords
The Stark Sworn Swords are the most disappointing basic unit in the game. They’ve got the statline of a unit of Stormcrow Mercenaries but instead of being able to add a universally useful ability like Incite, Counterattack, or Martial Training for no downsides they get Sundering and Critical Blow in exchange for a massive downside. There’s no reason to ever take these with the massive, massive improvement one shelf higher.
House Mormont She Bears
While a 6+ morale stat isn’t great, War Cry is one of the best abilities in the game. It’s got a massive range, a reliable impact, and incredibly permissive timing meaning you’ll never waste it. The fact that it comes on these girls natively meaning you can then add an attachment as well, rather than being a product of the attachment, is also fairly unique and lets you specialize these for a variety of roles but they are also extremely fine on their own.
House Tully Sworn Shields
The absolute tanks of House Stark, the Sworn Shields are very evidently the bright mirror of Lannister Guardsmen. They are marvellous at holding the line and fit a variety of attachments that make them even better at it. They will kill nothing, however – landing 3-4 hits on average with no other offense, and with such slow movement speed they’ll struggle to make a charge even with House Stark tactics cards. You can, however, sneak some additional damage out of them by having your archers fire into melee – each time that happens the Tullies make a panic check, and each time they succeed they add a wound on top of the damage done by your archers.
House Umber Berserkers
These, these are the real line infantry of House Stark. The House Umber berserkers are absolute blenders when they get going, are surprisingly quick with speed 6, and are tougher than they look with their ability to shrug off morale. But where they really shine is when you embed a Mormont Veteran in their ranks. What that will do is render the Umber Berserkers incredibly durable right at the moment when it’s most important for your opponent to kill them – blocking 3 hits automatically makes them essentially immune to a 7-dice 4+ attack like a unit of Stormcrows, for example, which added to their morale immunity on one rank will make them agonizingly difficult to kill off. They pair beautifully with otherwise pretty marginal Stark tactics cards like Winter’s Might too, because the one thing they have trouble with is punching through armour so adding Sundering or Vicious to them is nothing but upside. A unit of berserkers with a veteran is seven points but you’ll be hard pressed to find a better seven point infantry unit in the game so it’s worth building around.
Stark Bowmen
The ability to shoot at long range without line of sight is a unique value proposition already, and that’s even before the Crannogman Warden can give them that with Overwatch for massive area denial – an order which, by the way, can be refreshed by Roderik Cassel letting you do it multiple times a round. In theory you could blow all of Rodrik’s orders to fire three overwatch volleys in a turn if the situation warrants a machine gun nest. The Arrow Volley weakened effect looks very exciting but you have to remember that you’ll almost certainly be shooting your targets in the front without any morale penalties, so manage your expectations. About the only way you have to get it more reliable is to pair it with She Bears for the panicked tokens – and that is a good synergy because the timing on War Cry is ludicrously permissive.
House Umber Great Axes
The, uh, the new edition was not kind to these gentlemen and they’re one of the worst units in the entire edition right now. They’re likely going to get a buff at some point but until then just run them as Umber Berserkers.
Cavalry
Bring cavalry. If there is one thing I have learned from practical experience in all my games so far it’s that: bring cavalry. No matter how much you might not want to, no matter what you might think in theory, if you don’t have cavalry certain armies and approaches will just wreck you.
Outriders
But don’t take these cavalry. Outriders are shocking garbage; for the same price as Hedge Knights you lose a massive amount of offensive and defensive power. Ambush is also surprisingly unreliable if you’re equal to or outnumbered by your opponent – if you’re up against an elite force of about 4 units you’ll be able to get it off more reliably, but it still isn’t worth losing access to 3+ and Sundering from the Hedge Knights, before even taking into account all the other amazing things Hedge Knights do.
House Tully Cavaliers
Side by side with Bolton Flayed Men these don’t come out very well. The lance is +2 hits on the charge, but the Bolton Flayed Men have an extra dice and 3+ rerolls is close to a guaranteed hit anyway. Often times they’ll hit with about the same impact but the Boltons will win in the longer brawl. But these are by no means bad, and Embolden actually matters a lot because Starks generally have good-but-not-great morale across the board.
Doggos
There are three of the very best doggos in the whole world for you to choose from, although 90% of the time it’s going to be Shaggydog. Not only is Rickon Stark the best and cheapest of his doggo-equipped siblings but Shaggydog is the best of the wolves mechanically. If he gets into a unit of archers those archers are fucked because any attempt to kill him in melee is likely to make him angry enough to kill the archers by himself. Vicious is especially a nasty rule to have on a dire wolf that’s already likely to be hitting its target in the flank or rear.
Grey Wind is also a very good dog, 10/10, and disrupt is a fantastic ability to put where you need it – and it’s at its best in low quality infantry. A unit of 4+ 7 dice infantry affected by Disrupt will put a single wound on Grey Wind without any other abilities which can let you hold up an infantry advance with the commitment of a single doggo. The main reason you won’t see him more often is because Robb Stark is a little expensive for what he brings as a 2-point attachment.
Summer you’ll see rarely, Bran and Hodor are fairly mediocre as attachments go, and the wolves are best in objective holding and support roles so having one hang out close enough to mainline infantry combat is a really good way to give up a victory point to no effect.
NCUs
House Stark has a number of genuinely fantastic NCUs – their bench isn’t as deep as some factions but their good ones are absolute monsters and a core strength of the faction.
Catelyn Stark
She is one of your two NCU slots just sorted; her Influence ability is great by itself and leans into the Stark playstyle, and to just reliably pull off long range condition tokens at your own schedule matters a lot. It’s also worth noting how many abilities you can just skip if you’ve bought Catelyn to the table – House Stark has a tonne of ways to roll the highest attack dice set and she can do it reliably on command every turn.
Sansa Stark
Oh, dear, girl, she has a massive black eye from the nerf bat that hit her in between editions. Her ability would be worth considering if you didn’t have to give up a tactics zone effect to do it.
Arya Stark
You only get to use her ability once, but the timing of it is so extremely permissive and it doesn’t cost you an activation that it’s an absolute playmaker of an effect. Pulling a locked down unit out of close combat exactly when you need it can score you an objective, set you up for a flank charge. It’s at its best if you have a charge-hungry unit, like Rodrik Cassel in a unit of Bolton Bastard’s girls.
Rodrik Cassel
Next to Catelyin, Rodrik is the other obvious choice for an excellent Stark NCU. He’s not for every list, but any list that finds itself with multiple powerful order-based abilities like Shieldwall or War Cry can very obviously add Rodrik to get two more uses out of those abilities. The fact that he puts down vulnerable tokens when he does the thing that you obviously want to do at the start of each round is just icing on the cake.
Eddard Stark
An extremely powerful source of healing and morale control, the main reason Eddard is not an automatic pick is that he’s in House Stark. He’s a poor fit for a house that generally wants to fight at the brink of death, but if you’re building a list that doesn’t rely on that aspect of House Stark then you can easily find a use for his very powerful abilities. The timing on his healing isn’t ideal but the ability to reroll any dice from the check is a reverse panicked token, and if you need a dedicated anti-Lannister list he’s a great guy to bring.
Howland Reed
Hunter’s Guile is a fantastic influence ability, one of the best in the game – in fact, it’s so good it’s arguably worth bringing Jaqen H’gar just so you can drop it twice, and notably it stacks with Disrupt. House Stark has pretty limited access to the Counterattack and weakened tokens abilities that get the most value out of crashing an opponent’s to-hit roll but by bringing Rickon and a unit of Bloody Mummers you can present a threat so severe to low quality infantry that they might forego their attacks entirely rather than throw themselves on your swords. The speed penalty is also huge – dropping heavy infantry to speed 3 – i.e. 6 inch marches – can keep them out of the game for two entire rounds.
Attachments
House Stark has some of the game’s best one point attachments, which makes them curiously very good as Stormcrow employers. I’d definitely take a unit of Stormcrow mercenaries with an amazing Stark attachment over the Sworn Swords any day.
Crannogman Survivalist: Kind of suffers from the Crannogman and Outrider problem that this guy is at its best in small game sizes where there’s lots of dead table space to move around in – or alternately, in large game sizes where the battlefield has expanded. In a standard 4×4 40 point game it’s hard to get the most out of his mobility.
Crannogman Warden: A unique capability, the ability to put Overwatch on no-LOS Stark Bowmen and present a huge swathe of area denial is an extremely relevant and powerful situation. Getting this guy into the middle of the table lets him threaten the entire midfield simultaneously with a huge arc and it’s an order that can be reloaded by Rodrik Cassel
Meera Reed: She makes a great attachment to a unit of Stormcrows just for the cheap addition of hidden traps on a backfield objective holder unit. She might want to go elsewhere if you’re looking to put the Crannogman tag on a key unit in a Reed list.
Mormont Veteran: Faction definingly good, these are the most valuable attachments House Stark has access to. +1 auto blocked hit is huge to begin with, but it scales to +3 when you’re at one rank which is where House Stark wants to be more than anyone else. For the ultimate tanks you can put her in a unit of Tully Sworn Shields to block 4 hits automatically no matter how many wounds they’ve taken.
Rickon Stark: The prince of Winterfell comes with a suite of excellent abilities and is the best way to get a doggo in your lists. He seems destined for a unit of Sworn Shields at first glance except that Stubborn Tenacity doesn’t stack. You can do a lot worse than just putting him in Stormcrows for the cheap dire wolf, though.
Sworn Sword Captain: Stormcrows with a Sworn Sword Captain are better sworn swords than sworn swords. Note that Martial Training as an ability is best in long, drawn out fights. If it’s on a mobile constantly retreating and charging unit where everyone’s getting charge rerolls it’s not as good, and it’s likewise not as good on a unit that’s valuable enough to be a target for the swords zone because as an order you can only use it once per round.
Umber Champion: Incite is generically good, though House Stark doesn’t have the ability to add any morale penalties to an attack beyond adding Vicious so it’ll bounce right off some armies.
Winterfell Guardian: One of the better cavalry attachments in the game, it leans into the House Tully vibe of having your archers shoot into a melee and then pass the panic checks that result from that.
Bran and Hodor: Unfortunately these two are really bad, a discount off-brand Clegane with the worst of the dire wolves. There’s not much of a use case for them.
Brynden Tully: Useful as part of an anti-Lannister list but I wouldn’t consider him much beyond that, but that’s mostly because the one point attachments are generally so strong.
Bryndun Tully, Vanguard Infiltrator: Really interesting – but he’s a huge commitment of points on an already expensive unit that your opponent can possibly deny for multiple turns by consistently claiming the horse zone. Absolutely bring him, and absolutely having a cav unit in your opponent’s rear is a huge deal, just be aware that having a quarter of your army trapped off the table is Bad News.
Greatjon Umber: Furious Charge is a Sometimes ability, so you’re bringing this guy for To The Last – which is a durability buff that works out rather worse than the sheer solidity a Mormont Veteran gets you.
Jojen Reed: It’s easy to miss, but Greensight is that rare ability that allows rerolls on ranged attacks. That, plus the Crannogman keyword, make Jojen an interesting pick for a unit of Stark Bowmen in a Reed list.
Maege Mormont: Yikes, no. One of the worst two point attachments in the game, but the good news is that the demand for Mormont veterans is high.
Robb Stark: One of the best places for him, curiously, is running with Bolton Bastard’s Girls where he can help set up a cycle charge. Other than that it’s hard to find a place for him; retreat just isn’t that useful on infantry compared to cavalry.
Syrio Forel: I quite like Syrio as a way to add to a unit of Sworn Shields – Agile can help immunize them against chip damage, and Precision can give them just a little punch they might not get otherwise.
Sample Lists
House Bolton Cutthroats
- Greatjon Umber (Commander)
House Umber Bersekers
- Mormont Veteran
House Umber Bersekers
- Mormont Veteran
Hedge Knights
House Mormont She-Bears
NCUs:
Rodrik Cassel
Catelyn Stark
This is the best Stark list I can write. It leverages two units of berserkers as the core of the faction, She-Bears to help them punch through heavy armour, and Hedge Knights to give it a cavalry wing. Greatjon Umber in Bolton cutthroats is an interesting choice, but hear me out – in most scenarios having your commander sit on an objective is worth bonus points, and Greatjon is a commander who wants to be finishing opponents off more than he wants to be stuck in the fray. If you get him on an objective he can lunge off it with shocking alacrity with his guaranteed 11 inch charge, smash a worn down enemy unit in the flank, and then piroutette and slam another 11 inches across the table to do it again. If you can keep him in reserve until the critical moment he can absolutely turn the tide of battle which your otherwise very powerful assault line shouldn’t be falling behind in.
House Tully Sworn Shields
- Byrnden Tully Commander
House Tully Cavaliers
- Winterfel Guardian
Stark Bowmen
House Umber Berserkers
- Rickon Stark
Shaggydog
NCUs:
Eddard Stark
Catelyn Stark
This is House Stark as a wealthy Southern house – heavy infantry, heavy cavalry, excellent archers, with berserkers and dire wolf for spice. It’s a list that’s very good at morale and can stand up against Lannister morale pressure, with Eddard providing key rerolls and morale stats that hover around 4+/5+. With morale like that you can reliably fire your arrows into close combat and gain a combination of wounds recovered and wounds inflicted and those add up. It’s not quite perfect, there are so many cool things that I want to squeeze in here like a Crannog Warden on the bowmen, but any of those involve giving up one key strength or another.
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