With Rise of Angmar hitting stores and gaming tables soon, Thundercloud takes a dive into the new Good units and Legendary Legions.
We would like to thank GW for providing a copy of Rise of Angmar for review.
Table of Contents
New Units
While Good doesn’t get the range of new units that Evil gets, they still get enough that Arnor becomes much more viable as a force, and you can field a period-appropriate Gondor force to play out the end of the royal line of Gondor on the tabletop.
Earnur, Last King of Gondor
What if King Elessar, but not great? If you take Earnur then you cannot take any other named heroes from the Minas Tirith list without losing your army bonus, and Earnur makes all allies Impossible Allies. There’s a lot of utility in the Minas Tirith list in the cheap characters and captain with a name and a little bit better, so you do miss out on a fair bit by doing this.
Earnur himself has exactly the same stats as Aragorn, King Elessar except for dropping two points of Fate, making him easier to kill. He clocks in at over 100 points less even with an armoured horse and lance, because his special rules are massively worse.
Earnur must accept any Heroic Challenge, and must charge enemy characters if he is able to. This means he can be pulled out of formation with bait Orc Captains and generally mess up your battleline. It can pull him off objectives, away from key fights, and be a general pain in the backside. It’s an Active ability though, so it is turned off if Earnur is Transfixed or Paralysed.
Earnur has the Master Duellist rule which allows him to match the Fight value of a Non-Monster model he is engaged with, but this is of very limited utility as it takes effect before Heroic Strikes are resolved and Earnur is Fight 6. Let’s check how many Non-Monsters have fight 7 or above. Hmmm. It’s useful when fighting Glorfindel I suppose, or any of the other half dozen models in the entire game that it applies to that are all better in combat than Earnur and are more likely to wound you. If it had included Monsters it would be more useful. Note this is an Active ability, and so completely useless if Earnur has been hit with something that turns off Active abilities and reduces Fight Value, like a channeled Transfix.
The rule also contradicts the Heroic Strike rule on page 74 of the rulebook, which specifically says that Heroic Strike is resolved before other modifiers to Fight Value, and this ability will need to be FAQ’d to square that circle (though given the impending new edition this is unlikely to happen).
So Earnur’s special abilities are either not great or actively detrimental, and taking him locks out every other named character for Minas Tirith. I would not expect to see him at events.
Aranarth, First Chieftain of the Dunedain
A fairly handy hero who is substantially better than a captain, but not a top tier hero. Aranarth is more of an all rounder and to get the most out of him he should be leading some Rangers of the North/Dunedain as they get the effect of a banner within 6″. Very similar to Arathorn with a bit less raw combat ability and better support ability.
Expert Shot (firing twice) with 3+ shoot makes him a great hero to lead some skirmishing Rangers of Arnor and Dunedain.
Argadir, Captain of Arnor
A tooled up mounted Captain of Arnor with an extra point of Might, Expert Rider and Master of Battle (5+). Master of Battle is really useful if it goes off, as it lets you replicate actions like Heroic Combat, Heroic Strength and Heroic Strike, as Argadir does not have access to these.
Not as good as a number of Rohan heroes at a similar points level, but useful for getting your Knights around the board with Heroic March and using a limited pool of Might points to win key combats.
Knight of Arnor
At 14 points, only one point more than a Knight of Minas Tirith, this is substantially better. Fight 4 instead of Fight 3, Defence 6 instead of Defence 5 (though Knights of Minas Tirith can pay a point to get a shield and defence 6) and with Hatred (Angmar).
Elite Fight 4 cavalry are really useful and Arnor as a faction desperately needed the fast movement and impact they provide.
Factions
Minas Tirith
Earnur is added to the models that can be taken in a Minas Tirith list, but taking him means either losing the army bonus or not being able to take any other named character. The fluff is different, and there’s a little strengths and weaknesses section.
Arnor
Arnor retains the faction special rule but gains a Legendary Legion that you’ll just always take if you run a pure Arnor force, two new named characters and Knights, giving you some mounted warriors that let you run around the board much faster. Aranarth, first Chieftain of the Dunedain, lets you take Rangers of the North and Dunedain in the force as well, giving you the option to take a lot of cheap Independent Heroes as well.
Between the faction special rule meaning any Arnor models within 6″ of Arvedui automatically pass Courage tests, Arvedui having Stand Fast of 12″ and Courage 5, and a liberal sprinkling of Hatred (Angmar) among the Heroes and Warriors, you aren’t that bad in historical match ups, but even with the additional named characters in this supplement you don’t have the sort of powerful characters available to some factions when they get to higher points levels. Your most expensive character is 85 points, and it’s because he’s tooled up and mounted. Only one character has more than 2 wounds and 1 fate, so you have to worry about keeping your characters alive. Malbeth and his 6″ bubble from Gift of Foresight giving a save against wounds is incredibly useful, and makes him a compulsory choice to have chilling behind your battleline.
Rivendell
The available models and faction rule are unchanged, but there is a new fluff text section and a strengths/weaknesses and key models section.
The Rangers
No models are added to this faction in this book and the faction rule is unchanged. Some new fluff text is added, and a one page breakdown of the strengths of the faction, and it’s nice to have but could have been combined with their legendary legion entry and a page saved for something else in my opinion.
Legendary Legions
Battle of Fornost
Representing the alliance between Rivendell, the Dunedain and Gondor that fought against the Witch King following the fall of Arnor, this lets you take a wide range of different models.
You have to take Earnur and Glorfindel, which when you’ve put them on horses comes to 290 points, making this a legendary legion to take for bigger games.
For other named heroes you have Aranarth, a good skirmishing hero who can buff Dunedain and Rangers of the North, and Cirdan, a solid support caster to help out an Elf Warrior Battleline. Warbands cannot be mixed, so Elf Heroes must lead Elves, Gondor must lead Gondor, and the Hobbit Archers you can include must be led by Rangers or Dunedain.
Special rules give everything Resistant to Magic, very useful in going up against Angmar, Earnur cannot have his Courage reduced and Gondor Knights get +1 Fight on the charge, making them even better at winning fights and breaking lines.
Earnur with a wedge of Gondor Knights, Cirdan supporting an Elf battleline, and a group or two of skirmishing hobbit archers and Dunedain would be a nice little army, and by excluding Rivendell knights you are pushed towards that sort of build.
Army of Arnor
If you are taking a pure Arnor force, you absolutely should take this Legendary Legion. You have to take Arvedui, Last King of Arnor, but he’s not an expensive hero and this Legion sits nicely in the 500 point one day event bracket. You gain Dunedain and Rangers of the North, but lose Hobbit Archers as an option.
Malbeth the Seer gains two additional rules that make him a must take in this legion, but as he’s a 70 point support model dishing out a 6″ ignore wounds bubble he’s a very good choice for supporting a battleline anyway. He get’s +1 to his ignore wounds roll increasing it to 4+ (giving every friendly model within 6″ a fate point equivalent against every attack they take that is resolved before they roll for fate). This makes him an automatic pick before the second rule. Roll a D6 to generate that many Foresight points before the game, and these can be used to alter the results of dice rolls you make by +/- 1 as long as Malbeth is on the table, and you can spend more than one point on a roll. So it works like D6 free might points that you can use for any model.
Is this enough to make Arnor competitive? At low points values I would say absolutely yes.
Solid fight 4 warriors combined with very good support characters/special rules, elite cavalry and access to good skirmishers/shooting gives a very strong combination of strengths. At 500-600 points you hopefully won’t be running across super characters, and there’s a lot of really solid performers available to you.
Arathorn’s Stand
Another solid low point value legendary legion, it’s limited to Arathorn, Halbarad, Rangers of the North and Dunedain and represents the battle where Aragorn ended up an orphan and getting left with Elrond at Rivendell. You have to take Arathorn in this force, but he’s a decent hero so that’s fine.
You gain a lot of special rules. You keep the faction rule where Rangers and Dunedain increase their attacks to two if they aren’t mounted, but every model gains Woodland Creature and Mountain Dweller, to ignore most difficult terrain. Arathorn gains Heir of Isildur, where every time he expends a Might point he rolls a dice and on a 4+ it doesn’t count as being spent. The army as a whole gains +1 to reinforcement rolls and +1/-1 to rolls to deploy warbands randomly on the table.
Everyone is a Hero so it’s a low model count force, and everything has bows and 3+ shooting, so you can spend the entire game peppering the enemy with arrows trying to whittle them down. Every model has a point of Might at least to help win fights, and a point of Fate to avoid getting killed.
I do feel a chance was missed to have a more general Dunedain list where you could take Aranarth, Arathorn or Aragorn (with the option of Halbarad if you took the latter two) and represent the Dunedain hunting Orcs and Trolls in the wilds, but I can see why the designer decided to give Arathorn (very much an ‘oh they made a model of him’ character) and give him some time as the centre of the story.
Conclusion
Good tends to never get as many new and interesting toys as Evil, because they have far less access to monsters and there’s only so much excitement you can generate for ‘guy in a different hat.’
However, Arnor becomes a much more viable force and there are two interesting Legendary Legions that I think will see some play at one day events. I think Evil did better than Good in terms of models, but I don’t have any complaints about the quality of the models added in the supplement, they’re all bangers. I do think they painted themselves into a corner with Earnur’s rules, and he won’t see much play at events unless they’re changed (which it is entirely possible will happen, and sooner rather than later with the new edition.
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