Welcome back to our ongoing series for Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings. Today we’re looking at how to add to your starter set(s) and which units are best/most useful for you to pick up for a full army. 

What is a “full army”?

An age-old question that everyone will have their own answer to. Some want to collect a bit of everything while others only want to own exactly what they need to play full scale games. What a full scale game is exactly will depend somewhat on your local gaming group, but most TLAOK games are played at 1500-2000 points. Anything smaller than that and you’re really better suited to playing First Blood (the skirmish form of Conquest). In smaller games the reinforcement mechanic can skew incredibly hard to a few lucky rolls.

Each of the starter sets comes with roughly 800 points of army so let’s take a look and see what you’ll want to add to flesh these out to 1500 point forces. The first thing you’ll need to look at is adding a second Character to your army, maybe even 2 more depending on which units you want to add! Remember that the units you can take relies entirely on which Characters you have in your army, so choose accordingly. You can view which Characters take which units (more below) in the free official army builder as well as the free PDF’s of each faction.

One of the most important things to remember is that there is no singular correct way of putting together an army. The only thing you need to make sure of is that the units you’re choosing are available in a warband of one of your Characters – outside of that you can really pick and choose whatever you like the look of aesthetically or thematically for an army you want to play with.

Mainstay vs Restricted Units

When you’re building your army you first add a Character and then units for their Warband. Units in each hero’s Warband will be different depending on that character and will be either Mainstay or Restricted; Warbands are 1-4 units. You must have 1 Mainstay unit in each Warband as a minimum and can only have up to 1 Restricted unit per Mainstay unit in it. Meaning that if you want to have 2 Restricted units you must have 2 Mainstay units as well. You also must have a unit in that character’s warband that that character is able to join; if the character is infantry then it must have at least one infantry unit in its warband, if it’s cavalry must have a cavalry unit, etc. Characters start the game attached to a unit from their warband but can move to another eligible warband during the game once on the table.

The Hundred Kingdoms

Or 100 Kingdoms, if you prefer. The most “basic” faction in the game being the normal humans with knights, squires, militia and holy orders. If you got the current two player starter set (being replaced in 2023 with other factions) then adding the One Player Starter is a perfect next step. It saves you money and adds to your army giving you up to around 1200 points of playable force.

Units to consider adding next will depend a bit on your playstyle whether you want to add more knights to your force for faster moving and heavy hitting units or if you want to just flood the table with infantry and overwhelm your opponents with sheer numbers.

More Cavalry

Adding a Priory Commander to your army lets you take Order of the Crimson Tower knights to your force that hit even harder than your traditional Household Knights. Adding this Character and Unit is a bit more than 300 points too so a quick way to build out your army.

More household knights is never a bad thing either, however, and the lighter Mounted Squires add a faster unit that you can use for flank charges and to harass enemy back-field ranged units more easily without needing to commit your heavy hitters.

Flood the Field

If you’d rather just cover the table with bodies in a more horde-like aspect then you’ll want to consider adding a Chapter Mage for some magic to your force or an Imperial Officer to unlock different infantry units and bring your own units onto the table faster. Men at Arms are the bulk of many Hundred Kingdoms armies and are just not bad really with decent defence and able to hit back with some effect; they’re cheap enough to take larger blocks to be a real pain for your opponent and help you hold objectives. Steel Legion and Gilded Legion on the other hand will be able to effectively clear enemy units instead. Longbowmen are a fantastic addition for more ranged firepower with a combination of long range and Arcing Fire to be able to shoot at enemies out of line of sight lets you fire over your own units to create a wall of infantry that you can rain death over.

The Spires

Similarly to Hundred Kingdoms, if you have a Two Player Starter then the next best step is the One Player Starter set to give you a a lot of models that will all be useful to your army at a good cost.

This really is the horde army of the game, normally, but it doesn’t need to be. You can absolutely take more infantry in an army with some fun self-destructive upgrades with heroes than can heal your units back up but you can also field larger Brutes and Monsters if you prefer to.

Even More Bodies

Biomancers are just very good for any Spires army, especially those inundated with Infantry, consider one or even two of these so you can bring models back to life and heal others too. If you have these around then you can load up on catabolic node upgrades in your units and bring back any of your own models that you kill. They also let you take Incarnate Sentinels, a very hard hitting Brute unit that’s equally hard to kill.

More Force Grown Drones are really never a bad idea and are incredibly cheap but more elite infantry units like Vanguard Clones and Onslaught Drones will be able to pick apart enemy units quicker.

Alien Menagerie

Tipping the scales in another direction would be to add a Lineage Highborn character next alongside a unit of Avatara to join. The Highborn lets you field: Avatara, Incarnate Sentinels, and Centaur Avatara. As above, the Incarnate Sentinels are a fantastic Heavy unit to add to your army. Centaur Avatara give you an even faster moving cavalry unit that hits incredibly hard on a charge, acting as a great line breaking unit. Avatara are a Medium unit so will arrive relatively early in the game, they don’t hit as hard as either of the other options but the Highborn that joins them definitely can.

All are good options to add! Just make sure to get the Avatara for the Highborn to join before adding either of the other units.

The Nords

There are two sides to the Nords, sort of. There are the “normal” humans such as Huskarls and Raiders but also many monsters and trolls for a more mythic force. Nords are my main army and I like to have a mix of the two, cheapish human infantry mixed with Jotnars, Trolls, and Ugr for a flexible army that arrives early and hits hard. You likely won’t want or need any more Raiders unless you want to really lean in on flooding the table with half-naked Nords.

Raiding Party

As far as the humans go, you’ll have a Jarl from the starter set which is a fantastic character and opens up most of the army’s roster for you. Adding a Konungyr next for even more unit choice like Bow Chosen and the Ice Jotnar is a great next step. Both Bow Chosen and Stalkers are excellent ranged units, the former doing more direct damage at range while the latter flanks onto the table automatically and has Vanguard to move up the board quicker when they do able to give you larger reinforcement zones earlier than your opponent. I’ll never leave home without a solid block of Huskarls. When joined up with a Character they can have an incredible Resolve with high Defence and hit back with a high Clash value too.

Aside from Huskarls, which can be a real tank of a unit, the human units are glass cannons. Be careful with their placement and they’ll do wonders for you, move them up and into a bad position to be charged and they crumble fast.

Beasts and Jotnar

The other side of the list are all heavier, harder hitting, and tankier units. Jotnars of all flavours (Mountain, Ice, and Sea) are very solid units to add in and work well on their own. Adding a Blooded character gives you more unit options like Trolls which aren’t cheap to field but are tough, heal themselves, and hit with Cleave 2 attacks meaning they can get themselves onto an objective, be tanky and hit incredibly hard back. The Ugr work in a similar way but instead of healing they simply take less wounds from morale to begin with making them difficult to remove in the first place. Fenr Beastpacks on the other hand aren’t particularly tough but they’re fast and manoeuvrable enough to make important flank/rear charges on enemies where they’ll do the most damage.

Dweghom

In this starter set you get a solid bunch of core infantry that you’ll pretty much always use and a Hold Raegh which is a solid combat beatstick and brings your Heavy units onto the table a little more reliably.

Your next Character buy will go one of two ways which will effect which units you can take but more Hold Warriors and/or Dragon Slayers will never, ever, be a bad addition to your existing army. Warriors are tough, reasonably cheap, and can hit back hard enough to be worth taking multiple units of and Dragon Slayers do exactly what you expect: kill things really, really well.

Elemental Magic

Adding in a Tempered Sorcerer gives you a solid damage spellcaster. He unlocks Fireforged as a Mainstay unit; a great close-ranged shooting unit that the sorcerer can join and aren’t bad in combat, either. More importantly the sorcerer gives you access to the Hellbringer Drake as a restricted choice, so add that unit of Fireforged first and you get to take a massive beast with cannons mounted onto it. You’ll have the choice to place the Sorcerer on top of the Drake then if you’d like too!

Righteous Annihilation

A very normal next step is the Ardent Kerawegh, a Priest, which as your Warlord actually makes all of your units move faster. That’s right, faster moving dwarfs. Which is a good thing since one of the reasons you’re taking this guy is to unlock Flame Berzerkers in his warband; a combat focused unit with surprisingly decent armour and very high resolve meaning they’re hard to remove and deal extra damage as enemies in combat activate. They’re a Restricted choice so you’ll need to use some of the Warriors or Ballistae from your starter but that’s not an issue. You also gain access to both Initiates and Wardens which is a dual kit, the latter of which is sort of like a more elite Warrior unit with better killing power and nearly as defensive.

The W’adrhŭn

The orcs and dinosaurs faction. The faction that’s the trickiest to pick up for new players due to their chanting mechanic but once you wrap your head around it is extremely cool and thematic. In the starter set you get pretty much all the infantry you’ll need, unless you want to run larger units or ignore the dinosaur part of this army entirely (I’m not sure why you would, but you do you).

Realistically you’ll want to add both a Scion of Conquest and a Matriarch Queen to your army and in that order too. The Predator that you’ll have from the starter set already gives you access to basically every unit anyways so you’re not taking the Heroes for that reason but for what they do for your army.

As for the Predator’s warband both Raptor Riders and an Apex Predator gives you dinosaurs and very solid units. Raptors are a fast, light, skirmishing cavalry unit that can harass lighter enemy units well and give you some early game charges easily while pushing up your reinforcement zones. On the other hand is the Predator, a massive killing machine that will almost guarantee you killing whatever it touches.

Controlled Chanting

The Scion of Conquest is just a fantastic addition to any W’adrhŭn army. With a great Supremacy ability that can give you incredible flexibility with your activations and being a Priest with very powerful spells you’ll be happy to have it. Your unit choices, of what’s currently been released, is the same as the units you got in the starter set so you can focus on adding other units to your Predator’s warband.

Matriarchal Power

After you add a Scion to your army a Matriarch Queen is non-essential but does let you take the Warbred. These are Brutes and incredibly killy. Throw them at whatever problem you need dealt with and they sure will deal with it, swiftly. They’re a reasonably tough unit as well so can get stuck in to a larger/tougher enemy unit and hold up well. She even heals nearby units and in this game healing means bringing dead models back to units!

If you’re adding an Apex Predator to your army anyways then the Queen can ride on top of it, using the Apex Master mastery upgrade making your big dino even killier (and cooler, let’s be honest). The best part of this however is that she can take a unit of Warbred as Mainstay, the Apex as a Restricted unit and doesn’t need to take any infantry regiments; this is exactly how I’d build her warband, simple and effective.

The Old Dominion

Last up we have the undead legions. Your starter set gave you an Archimandrite, a powerful Priest with access to great powers and a lot of infantry. Fortunately all those infantry are all good and adding more of any of them is not a bad option by any means. More Legionaires and Moroi especially as they’ll often make up the bulk of many Old Dominion armies as your cheapest infantry and powerful ranged units respectively.

Undead Cavalry

Adding in a Strategos whether mounted or on foot is how you get some great heavy cavalry in your army: the Kataphraktoi. It’s a Restricted unit for either of these heroes so you’ll need a unit of Legionaires in their warband first and one for each unit of cavalry you want to take, but those mounted skeletons are worth the infantry investment.

Boney Brutes

Ok so these aren’t all made of bone, but the alliteration was right there. The Archimandrite from your starter set gives you access to Bone Golems as a restricted unit. A heavy, tough, and hard hitting brute unit that can wade their way through enemy units while your infantry hold the line. Great to pick up immediately and add to your starter set.

The other brute units are a dual kit: Kanephors and Karyatids. At time of writing these units are spelled with C’s instead of K’s in the army builder. The former are another combat based brute unit that are better thrown into larger enemy units due to denying any support attacks and/or enemy units with high Cleave values to make use of their high Evade value. The other unit are a ranged brute unit with a long range of 30″ with 3 shots each (increased to 4 with their Memory of Old) that pierces through armour and has the potential to deal multiple wounds per shot. Both are great bits of kit for your army but you’ll need to take a Hierodeacon to field them.

Fallen Divinity

This piece gets its own section because of how unique it is. It’s not actually something I recommend getting so soon after your starter set only because it’s a large investment in money for something so different. It’s a Character and so can have a warband but unlike others it doesn’t actually need to and you can just field it on its own; good thing too because its 2 Mainstay unit choices are not yet available to buy. It must always be your Warlord so you’re stuck with its Supremacy Ability and it changes how you’ll play enough and this is not something for newer players.

It is incredibly cool and a great centrepiece model. If you absolutely really want to get it and add it to your army it’s not a bad choice by any means, but it’s best to stick with some of the more traditional characters and units to learn with first.

To War and Victory!

If you were expecting a definitive list of “you must buy these things” you were never going to get it really. This just isn’t that type of game, none of the options are actually bad to take at any point it’s really down to learning how they work on the table and playing to their strengths and the best way to do that is playing! Try not to worry about winning, often times you learn more by losing anyways and seeing where you could have played better.

As I said, most importantly it’s down to how you want your army to play but also making sure that you’re able to field the units you’re buying with the characters that you have – or picking up the appropriate characters if not.

So, play games! Lose! Learn!